The Mistaken Connection

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚙𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝙵𝚒𝚏𝚝𝚎𝚎𝚗

picture artist: alekart on ??? (search alekart fanart and plenty of their work should come up)

Sitting criss-crossed with two knights and one castle, Harry furrowed his brow and demanded movement from his pieces. They floated along in whichever direction he told, not too fussy for chess pieces, though maybe it was because he was winning. Ginny, also criss-crossed on his bed, was having a hard time getting her team's morale up.

"Check."

"C'mon, guys, it's not over yet! I swear, if my king would just move to—"

"It's all doomed!" cried the king. "We're all dead! Not again, please!" He waddled over to his next spot with tears in his eyes, and Ginny was the only one in the room who didn't see the queen set diagonally across the board.

The queen cackled as she raised her sword. "Check mate," Harry barely managed to whisper before his queen was zipping across the board with her enormous sword shattering the king's body.

"God," Ginny whined, leaning back and dangling off the bed, "how did you win three games?!"

Harry smiled and shrugged, packing up the pieces as they'd promised. "Just takes time. Your brother's a menace at this game, I'm surprised you're so bad."

"Hey!" Ginny whisper-shrieked, flicking his forehead after bouncing back onto his bed. "I'll have you know I'm much better at Quidditch! Why don't we go race, huh? Then we'll see who's laughing!"

"What about my ears?" Harry really did want to go out to the field, but after Blaise raised his voice just a smidgen, his entire head had lit up in flames. The field wasn't worth that pain.

"Oh," Ginny considered. "Oh, what about we cover them? We can stuff them with cloth or cotton or something."

Harry was already jamming his feet into shoes and dashing into their bathroom for a mirror at the suggestion. It was an easy-enough plan: see somebody, fly away and hope they don't think you hate them or hope they're not persistent, and then flag them down the next day and explain that you bursted the one part of your body you really shouldn't have.

What a brilliant idea, Harry admitted, deciding that he had been searching for any excuse to get out of that blasted dorm since he'd been in there for two hours and it was nearing four in the afternoon already.

They practically raced for the brooms themselves, shoving with elbows and trippy feet, and Harry nearly ran face-first into Pansy Parkinson, who adorned a deep scowl. "Harry!" she whispered, clearly about to chew him out.

"We're getting earplugs," Ginny rushed to clear up, and Harry nodded reverently as Luna came up behind Pansy. She crept her fingers over Pansy's spaghetti strap-covered shoulders, and Pansy startled, only held facing them by Luna's tightened grip.

"He's a grown boy, Pansy," Luna smiled, staring at the back of Pansy's head as the raven-haired girl relaxed into her touch, "you should really stop worrying so much. If he knows what he wants and a safe way to get there, he's ready to fly the nest."

With a festered disdain, Pansy's eyes flicked up to meet Harry's, and she murmured, "I don't care about you, Potter. It's only that Hermione would have my head on a platter if she found out I let you do anything stupid."

"Stupid like what?"

"Like burst your sonus filtres because you walked down the one corridor you weren't supposed to." Pansy nearly lunged at him, restrained only by Luna's sudden hug. "Now look what you've done! Blaise has gone mad because of you, lost to that stupid fucking illness. Why'd you have to go and fuck with—"